On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 05:04:22PM -0700, Thomas Lord wrote:
> jataseli@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Anyway, my own answer would be that i) there can be agency insofar
> > as there are possible courses of action, self-understanding, and
> > ways of being a person available; ii) finding out what is necessary
> > and what is contingent in the present, i.e. the diagnostic function
> > of Foucault´s approach is to point out the locus where action
> > is possible; iii) in historical perspective there are events of
> > thought, which make new ways of being a person available with all
> > the dangers these events may bring about; iv) new thought can have
> > an author, but thouhgt as a event has to become intelligible,i.e. it
> > has to become effective, and this becoming has always its historical
> > conditions; so no matter how original or groundbreaking some
> > person´s thought might be, its acceptance is always conditioned by
> > neighbouring practices which allow it to have effects in real.
>
> That doesn't quite parse, especially taken as a reply to the question
> "Where is the agent in Foucault."
Thomas, where is the parsing difficulty? Perhaps in the phrase "ways of
being a person"?
Myself, I do not see much sense in saying that events of thought
"make available" new ways of being a person. It seems that this is a
round-about way of saying that an event of communication might create
a new person. And in this light (iv) merely points out that this new
person is not completely new, but only a modified version of the old.
But one can go even further than (iv) and point out that the event of
thought itself must be a part of an integrated relationship between
an individual and a material/social environment--an environment which
seems, as a matter of psychological fact, to have far more influence
over available ways of being a person than does thought (original or
not). Where thought manages really to influence, it probably does so
through altering material or social conditions--and especially through
making unavailable old ways of being a person.
> jataseli@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> > Anyway, my own answer would be that i) there can be agency insofar
> > as there are possible courses of action, self-understanding, and
> > ways of being a person available; ii) finding out what is necessary
> > and what is contingent in the present, i.e. the diagnostic function
> > of Foucault´s approach is to point out the locus where action
> > is possible; iii) in historical perspective there are events of
> > thought, which make new ways of being a person available with all
> > the dangers these events may bring about; iv) new thought can have
> > an author, but thouhgt as a event has to become intelligible,i.e. it
> > has to become effective, and this becoming has always its historical
> > conditions; so no matter how original or groundbreaking some
> > person´s thought might be, its acceptance is always conditioned by
> > neighbouring practices which allow it to have effects in real.
>
> That doesn't quite parse, especially taken as a reply to the question
> "Where is the agent in Foucault."
Thomas, where is the parsing difficulty? Perhaps in the phrase "ways of
being a person"?
Myself, I do not see much sense in saying that events of thought
"make available" new ways of being a person. It seems that this is a
round-about way of saying that an event of communication might create
a new person. And in this light (iv) merely points out that this new
person is not completely new, but only a modified version of the old.
But one can go even further than (iv) and point out that the event of
thought itself must be a part of an integrated relationship between
an individual and a material/social environment--an environment which
seems, as a matter of psychological fact, to have far more influence
over available ways of being a person than does thought (original or
not). Where thought manages really to influence, it probably does so
through altering material or social conditions--and especially through
making unavailable old ways of being a person.